Monthly Archive v4.0.0 released

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Monthly Archive v4.0.0

After a few months of hard work, we are happy to announce the new, improved and secured version of Monthly Archive Joomla! Component & Module. The new version is served with a lot of features and many, high or low risk, bug fixes.

The Monthly Archive package has been re-written from scratch and is based on the most recent Joomla! MVC standards. Note that the version 4.0.0 of Monthly Archive is a major release and is not just a simple update release like the previous versions.

Please, check some instructions before the upgrade. Read them carefully.

  1. Take a full backup of your Joomla! Files and database. This is a recommendation for any update of any extension you are using.
  2. Note that the version 4.0.0+ of Monthly Archive is not available anymore for Joomla! 2.5 series. DO NOT install this version if your Joomla! is not up to date, at least to the latest series of Joomla!.
  3. You should uninstall the previous version of Monthly Archive Package (component/module/plugin). After installation, you must set the parameters again, both for component and module. (Before uninstalling the package, it is recommended to write down the previous settings. It is not required, but it is recommended if you had some special values in the parameters like date format).
  4. Do not hesitate to contact us at anytime, simply by using our Support Area.

So what’s new in this major release:

CHANGELOG | 20-Apr-2017 : v4.0.0

+ 29 new useful parameters have been added.

+ More than 40 parameters have been improved.

+ “Content-Type” parameter. You can now display directly the list of Articles instead of displaying the list of Months and Years like the previous version did.

+ Check first if a third party extension is active (installed or enabled), and then retrieve content from there, without displaying any errors.

+ STATE: You can choose a different type of article state to be displayed. You can either show all articles, the featured articles, the non-featured articles or both. The published or unpublished articles, the trashed articles, and of course the archived articles (from Joomla core functionality).

+ Custom Page Title and Welcome Message are now welcome. Another useful feature to set your custom texts for the page title and the welcome message for each content type (months/years list or list of articles) separately. Also, you can hide the page title or the welcome message, again in each content-type separately.

+ Include/Exclude content. Another great feature is to display any content you want to be displayed. You can choose which content items to include or exclude from your Archive, specific years, months, categories, authors, and articles. In the new version, the parameters are now displayed as a new separate tab in the component parameters.

+ UIkit Front-end framework: The layout has been improved spectacularly. It is based on the fantastic UIkit framework of Yootheme team. The UIkit is a lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces.

+ SEARCH FORM: Choose the input form fields that will be displayed in the search form. Select those that are useful for your Users. You can show the date select field, the order select field, the author’s select form field, and the search input text. Also, you can show/hide each form field in each content-type separately.

+ LAYOUT & NEW PARAMETERS: There are multiple new useful parameters to customize the layout for each content type separately, the list of months/years and the list of articles. For example, you can choose if you want to display the years in an accordion style. You can select the ordering of years, most recent years first, or oldest years first. To avoid big lists, you can set your own limits (e.g. display only the three most recent years and their months).

+ IMAGES: We add more powerful parameters for images. You can show or hide the image. You can choose if your image will be displayed with a link or not. You can choose the image type (the intro image, the full, the auto-detect from the content item or the blank image). Finally, you can set your preferred image dimensions (width and height).

+ COMMENTS: This is a feature of a previous version but the functionality has been improved and optimized.

+ MODULE: The module has also been re-written from scratch with bug fixes, speed optimizations, and new features just as the component has.

^ The language files have been changed. Some strings have been deleted and some others have been added.

# Minor issues with previous parameter fields have been resolved.

# Most of the bug fixes and security issues have been resolved.

# CSS and Javascript issues have been resolved.

Hope you will find this update very useful and you’ll be happy with the new features and improvements after the upgrade.
As I said above, do not hesitate to contact us anytime if you want to tell us your feedback, or report any issues.
Thank you all guys for your support all of these years.
Best Regards,
Yiannis Christodoulou
Founder and Lead Developer, Web357